Once All the Rocks Were Alive

Once All the Rocks Were Alive excavates the buried connection between a 70-million-year-old dwarf dinosaur and a 20th-century Transylvanian baron in a part biographical, part paleontological story that blends science with fiction and speculates on common geological histories.
The eroded plateau of Hațeg, now exposed to wind and weather, was once a tropical island in the Tethys Sea. Here, in the early 1900s, paleontologists unearthed fossils of miniaturized dinosaurs — creatures that had evolved smaller bodies in response to island isolation, such as the dwarf dinosaur Balaur bondoc. Franz Nopcsa, the openly queer Transylvanian baron and founder of paleobiology, proposed the theory that would explain them: island syndrome. Despite his groundbreaking work and the dramatic murder-suicide that would end his life, Nopcsa remains a marginalized, eccentric, and mostly forgotten character.
Threading these accounts together, the fragmented narrative of the installation jumps between the Late Cretaceous, the early last century, and an ominous near future. Two LED screens display footage shot in Hațeg’s high-altitude terrain: rust-red sediment, close-ups of lichen and pebble, then sudden pulls to reveal the vastness of the landscape. Human figures appear, press themselves into the earth, and gradually fade into the rock face until they’re indistinguishable from geological formations.
Amongst rock-like clay sculptures, two performers transmit semi-fictional records from a multi-species cast of characters. This disrupted, yet true, story of death and love unfolds where concrete riverbeds, prehistoric seas, and the Temu stratum converge. The performance is completed by Petra Hermanova’s sonic interventions, a balancing act between death and drama.
“Once All the Rocks Were Alive is a shift of scale and of perception: a poetics of interdependence between organic life, nature, memory, and matter. Nona Inescu’s project rethinks the human relationship to the planet and to what we call progress, reactivating local and marginal narratives from Romania, which, though nearly forgotten, hold planetary resonance.” (Adriana Blidaru)
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Once All the Rocks Were Alive

2-channel 4 K video, performative installation, approximate duration 22′
In collaboration with: Adrian Ganea, Jared Marks, Petra Hermanova
Performers: Owen Ridley-DeMonick, Eliza Trefaș
3D modelling: Marta Mattioli
Video editor: Cătălin Cristuțiu
DOP: Boróka Biró
Producer: Rokolectiv
Looks: Emilian Pospaii
Technical assistance: Matei Emanuel, Dragoș Petrișor

Documentation photography by Rareș Toma

Thanks to Virgil Scripcariu